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Photo: Peggy Webb, courtesy of Henry Ewert
Photo from frontispiece of The Story of the B.C. Electric Railway
by Henry Ewert (Whitecap Books Ltd., 1986).
What’s Right with This Picture?
Everything. It is a fine summer
day in New Westminster, British Columbia, in the year 1909. Car 39 has
stopped briefly on Park Row on its way into town. It carries its passengers
through a world that is ordered, serene, at peace. Their eyes feast upon the
glories of Queen Anne architecture. They hear the birds and the trolley wire
sing a duet in an ether as yet unpolluted by engine noise or boom boxes.
Their poised servants, the motorman and conductor of the car, stand as
visible assurances of responsibility and reliability. God is in His Heaven
and all is right with the world.
To us, the picture is almost
painful. It reminds us of a world we had, and have lost. But it does more
than that. From the standpoint of public transportation, it points not only
to the past, but also to a possible future. This photograph shows a
virtually perfect integration of a highly attractive, widely desirable means
of public transit—the streetcar—with the environment in which it operates.
The streetcar right-of-way is
visually less conspicuous than the boardwalk on the other side of the
street. The track is barely visible, and much of the track bed appears to be
planted with clover (or maybe just weeds). The wires are few and the poles
blend in with the trees. The car, though large for its time, is small enough
so that its surroundings dominate the view. It is all done to a human scale,
comfortable, friendly, welcoming.
How many 21st century Americans,
if offered such a streetcar for their own town or city, would turn it down?
Offer it we can, because the cost of building and operating a streetcar like
this, a Heritage trolley, is remarkably low—lower than any other form of
rail transportation. As our study will show, virtually any place that wants
a streetcar line can have one.
The genesis of this study lies in
a remark the mayor of Milwaukee, John Norquist, made to the authors. “When I
tried to get the people of Milwaukee to go for Light Rail, they said, ‘No
thanks. We don't even know what Light Rail is.’ When I said instead, ‘Let's
bring back the streetcars,’ they replied, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea!’”
All across the country, transit
advocates, transit agencies and local officials see the need for rail
transportation. While buses in many places carry only the transit dependent,
rail service can appeal effectively to riders from choice—people who have
cars and can drive, but choose to ride transit instead. Most riders from
choice represent a car removed from rush hour traffic, which benefits
everyone, including the person who still drives.
The problem is, how to get
started? Most cities and virtually all towns lost their rail transit at
least half a century ago. Most of their citizens have never ridden a train
of any kind. It is hard to go to people who have never been on a train and
ask them to vote hundreds of millions or billions of dollars for “Light
Rail,” a term that has no meaning to them.
But a streetcar is different. Even
if they have never ridden or even seen a streetcar, there seems to be an
ancestral memory of what they were, and it is a pleasant memory. It brings
to mind an earlier and happier time, when “going down town” was a major
event, and downtown itself was an exciting place to shop, go to dinner and
see a show. Streetcars fit a downtown well, and not only downtowns but also
older residential neighborhoods and new developments built to traditional
designs. All of these are coming back, or trying to, and streetcars can
help.
Not only do people understand what
a streetcar is, and think well of it, a proposal to bring back streetcars
need not break the bank. Instead of asking the voters for hundreds of
millions of dollars, a few million will usually suffice, at least to get the
first line up and running. Often, the money may be available without any new
taxes.
Hence the purpose of this study:
to show cities and towns, and transit advocates in them, how they can
inaugurate rail transit in a way that makes it easy. The answer is simple:
bring back the streetcars! We will take a broad look at the return of the
streetcar—it is already happening—and then carefully examine three case
studies of successful new streetcar lines: McKinney Avenue in Dallas, which
uses Vintage (antique) streetcars and volunteer labor (and keeps costs
remarkably low); Memphis, Tennessee, which also uses vintage equipment but
has professional operators who are transit system employees; and Portland,
Oregon, which recently opened the first post-war streetcar line that uses
modern equipment. Each of these case studies offers a model other cities and
towns can follow.
Of course, we do not intend to
present streetcars as the solution to all transit needs. They cannot carry
vast crowds of commuters in from the countryside at high speeds; that
requires commuter rail. They cannot offer fast suburban service; that need
is met best by Light Rail. They cannot substitute for subways in large
cities (though they may usefully augment them, and complement the bus
system).
What streetcars can do, almost
everywhere, is help rail transit make a start. They can give people
something to see, ride, understand and like, so that when it does come time
for commuter rail or Light Rail, rail transit is no longer an unknown
quantity. People can relate to it, in their own town or city, because they
have ridden it or at least enjoyed the sight of it passing by. And, knowing
what rail transit is, they feel comfortable voting for more.
We do not mean to suggest that the
streetcar is useful only as an appetizer before a larger rail transit
banquet. It remains a good and useful way of getting around town, all on its
own. In fact, when other modes of rail transit are available, people still
like streetcars. When San Francisco built a subway under Market Street, it
ended streetcar service on the tracks above (while wisely leaving them in
place). Several years ago, it put the streetcar service back, using Vintage
trolleys. Now, those streetcars are full, because many regular riders prefer
riding them to the subway. Similarly, when the authors visited Toronto a few
years ago, the Toronto Transit Commission told us that of all the transit
modes they offered—bus, trolley bus, subway, and streetcars—people said in
surveys that they liked the streetcars best.
That brings us back to our
wonderful photo from New Westminster, British Columbia, in 1909. Our
ancestors were not fools. They had some good things going. If we are as wise
as they, we will know that what worked once, can work again. The same
simple, inexpensive technology, the unobtrusive tracks and wires, the
charming trolley cars with their inlaid wood and brushed brass that carried
our forefathers in safety and comfort around their cities can carry us
around ours. Perhaps the best resource for a community looking for new
transit solutions is a picture of its own past.
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